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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Not long ago, a woman from Brooklyn named Shavonne wanted a catsuit to wear to a costume party. She went to Trash and Vaudeville, a clothing store in the East Village, and spoke to Jimmy Webb, a salesman. "I don't have catsuits," Webb told her. "No one's the same across the shoulders and chest," he said, tracing the wings of her collarbone with his finger. "Catsuits have to fit perfectly, and they're expensive." Webb is also the store's buyer. "If I buy six," he said, "I can only sell one." Shavonne was disappointed. "Here's what you do," Webb told her. "You go to Capezio, on Broadway, and buy a unitard. You know what a unitard is?" She shook her head. "A full-body leotard," Webb said. "They stretch to fit. You'll look great." She thanked him and left.
"Did you know I went to hairdressing school?" Webb asked me. I said I didn't. "I'm a beauty-school dropout, three times," he said. "Really, I'm more the kind of person to have my hair dressed than to dress other people's. They told me I was inappropriately attired. I caused too much of a stir."
I asked how.
"Wearing a unitard," he said. "It was a leftover one year from when I was a quaalude on Halloween. A Rorer 714, the original quaalude. I was bone-thin back then, twenty pounds lighter than now. I got a solid-white unitard. I wore solid white, cheap, Thirty-fourth Street, high-heeled boots, and I had a little Puerto Rican woman bleach my hair with old-school wig peroxide. I must have looked like a Q-tip, but in a good way. I wrote 'Rorer 714' on the front. Years later, when people are looking for catsuits that are expensive and don't fit, I know where a unitard is."
Adolescents, college kids, musicians, hobbyists, and aspirants both timid and bold regard Webb as an authority on matters of dress--especially rock-and-roll style, especially high-punk-rock style, which he epitomizes. He has helped assemble wardrobes for MTV, Rolling Stone, and Vogue. Jenni Lee, a stylist specializing in editorial work and CD covers, says that she consults Webb in order to dress "rocker bands, metal bands, rockabilly guys, even indie bands." She says that she also admires him because "he does daring things in dressing women." For Josh Madden, another stylist, Webb is "the spirit of everything that rocks." Madden values Webb's pragmatic eye. "Stylists think you have to pull a lot of stuff for a shoot," he says. "Jimmy tells you, 'Don't worry, just get the right thing.' It works because he's authentic. He's at the heart of where this stuff's coming from. He's been around punk rock and music and New York City for a long time, and he's around kids, too, so he knows. Where he's coming from, think about New York in, like, 1981, with Madonna, Andy Warhol, Basquiat, the Ramones, Lou Reed, every different kind of thing going on. Jimmy's one of the last pieces we have left of it, in my opinion."
Webb is forty-nine. He is small and still so lean that he looks as if he were made from wires and cables. He has shaggy, dyed-blond hair, a narrow, asymmetrical face, thin lips, a jut chin, and slitty blue eyes. Tattoos climb his arms like vines. On his wrists he wears stacks of heavy silver bracelets that get cold in the winter. Around his neck hangs a silver heart surrounded by thorns. People often stare at him on the street. Some of them appear to be trying to place him as a cultural figure. Women tend to appreciate his flamboyance. Young men typically avoid looking at him, or, as they pass, cut their eyes toward him. They seem unsettled by his appearance, as if his audacity were a rebuke to their reserve. Webb has a signature outfit--jeans, a T-shirt, a leather vest, and in winter a leather jacket with a hood trimmed in...
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